MMO

If you've been looking forward to the release date of Amazon's new MMO New World, then here's some sour news: Amazon has announced that New World has been delayed. Originally, New World was supposed to launch in May, with a closed beta slated to begin sometime this month. With this delay, the release date has been pushed back to the other side of summer.

We already knew that Amazon is working on a Lord of the Rings TV series, but today, the company's game development arm confirmed that it's working on video game as well. Apparently, Amazon has partnered with Leyou Technologies and Middle-earth Enterprises to make a new free-to-play MMO set in the Lord of the Rings universe. Details are fairly slim at the moment, but Amazon is letting loose a few morsels today.

At E3 last June, Bethesda dropped multiple bombshells, many of which still have to actually land in players’ hands. One of the most anticipated but also most doubted of the pack is Fallout 76, an online survival version of the widely popular franchise. The skepticism and concern mostly come from the Herculean task of bringing elements that made Fallout a hit to an online setting without also bringing the most hated elements of online games. And at QuakeCon, Bethesda revealed exactly how it plans to do that.

This week the folks at Blizzard teased "multiple Diablo projects in the works" coming to users in the near future. For those still playing Diablo 3, this could be good news, it could be bad. For everyone else who played Diablo II or the first Diablo dungeon-running masterpiece from times untold, this announcement is only golden. Today we're running down a few different possibilities for what these new Diablo projects might be.

After being available in some form for more than 16 years, it's kind of amazing that RuneScape hasn't had a mobile release yet. After all, the browser-based MMO seems like a decent fit for mobile devices from a graphics perspective, and with 200 million registered accounts, the audience certainly seems to be there. Developer Jagex has finally realized this, announcing that it will soon be releasing a mobile client for RuneScape.

The launch of the long-awaited and long-delayed Final Fantasy XV has brought the franchise back into the spotlight. That includes the MMORPG version of the game. Final Fantasy XIV is about to enter a new chapter in its life that will introduce not just new places but a new character class as well. And to entice both new and retired newbies back into the fold, Square Enix is waiving the 14-day limit to free accounts, letting you play as long as you want, until you hit the level cap.

There's no question that World of Warcraft is the most successful MMO of all-time. After 11 years, the game is still running strong, with more current subscribers than any other. But this wasn't going to be their only MMO. For years there were whispers about another planned MMO, named Titan. But what happened?

Earlier today the news broke that one of the most popular World of Warcraft emulation servers is being taken offline. The reason that it's going dark is due to the threat of legal action from Blizzard against both the team running the server, and the hosting provider that keeps it online. While Blizzard is legally in the right, it does bring up some interesting questions about the way MMOs change over time.

Online games have been around for a while, but EverQuest gave birth to the MMO as we know it. Yes, Ultima Online did come first, but I'd argue that EverQuest really popularized the genre. Daybreak Games (formerly Sony Online Entertainment) has been hard at work on the third installment of the MMO series, dubbed EverQuest Next for some time. Unfortunately, it would seem that all of their hard work was for naught.

What do you do when you've sunk a ton of money into a MMO that never really took off? Well, first you take away the mandatory monthly subscriptions, and then you offer people a chance to win a million bucks. At least that's the route that Zenimax has taken with The Elder Scrolls Online.

The MMO market is pretty saturated these days. There was a time where you had only a handful of options, such as Everquest, WoW and Star Wars Galaxies. Now you can't throw a rock without hitting half a dozen “WoW killers” that have gone free-to-play. So how can a publisher get their game to stick out in your mind, when you're looking for something to play? One option is to offer players a million bucks to try out your game.

When you play an MMO like World of Warcraft, you always had to choose between wearing gear that looked good, and gear that actually helped you. Sure, there are high tier sets that look fantastic, but if everyone is wearing that same set, then you lose any sense of individuality in the game. That's why Blizzard introduced their transmogrification system. And that system is getting an overhaul in the next expansion.